Laura’s Road Show: Funders Forums and assorted side trips

In June, I was invited to take social lending on the road and lead an hour presentation/Q&A session on my fellowship topic of ‘social lending’ or what, in the US, we call ‘community development lending.’ Every year my two hosts, the government Office for the Community and Voluntary Sector (OCVS)and the member-based organization, Philanthropy New Zealand (PNZ), bring an international speaker to New Zealand to enrich the knowledge of funders, both government and private grantmakers.

This year, they’d engaged Fiona Ellis, a dynamic philanthropic leader from the UK, to talk about how to create a learning culture. Fiona had been the CEO of Northern Rock Foundation which gave away some of the profits of northern England’s Northern Rock Bank. Besides being one of Europe’s premier foundations, it became famous because its cash cow, the bank, was the canary in the mine for the international financial crisis back in 2007.

Since I was already in New Zealand, I was asked to come along on the tour to talk up social lending. We all thought there would be relatively little interest and so I was scheduled after lunch after Fiona’s session so that folks who wanted to leave could do so. As it turned out, there was tremendous excitement about social lending and few if any people took the opportunity to cut out -- a few funders actually came only to the social lending session!

My entire NZ experience was like this – interest and excitement about social lending building and building. All totaled about 150 funders came to six sessions in the following cities: Hamilton (where we spoke right next to a lovely botanical garden with different outdoor ‘rooms’ from all over the world), Auckland, Queenstown, Christchurch, Rotorua (where there were geysers and boiling mud outside the conference center’s door), and New Plymouth (with a wonderful museum called Puke Ariki and several very interesting art galleries).

A few side stories from the road show:

• In one of the art galleries in New Plymouth, they had an exhibit about New Zealand’s community halls. This exhibit encapsulated what I love about New Zealand. The exhibit explained how after World War II, the people wanted to commemorate their fallen soldiers. Instead of erecting monuments, they built Memorial Halls to serve as living community centers throughout this mostly rural nation. I just love the practicality and community spirit of this initiative. For more, see: http://blog.teara.govt.nz/2010/06/21/watch-out-you-might-catch-this-bug/. The curator of the exhibit had dug up the plans for the halls and then sought out artistic renderings of the Halls, many of which are still active focal points for their communities.
• I left the tour for a quick return to Wellington to attend a Parliamentary Ceremony for all the Fulbright and Axford Fellows. It’s exciting being a somewhat big fish in relatively little pond.

Pictured from left to right are the Axford Fellows and our Fulbright staff liaison, namely: me, Terri, Arnell Hinkle, Martin Boswell, Lou Green, and Hillery Harvey.

• The organizers of the Funders Forums generously scheduled us in Queenstown, some of NZ’s  most beautiful country, on a Friday and then for our other South Island stop, Christchurch, the following Tuesday.

This photo was taken right outside the meeting room where we spoke in Queenstown. Pictured, from left to right are me, Fiona Ellis from Northern Rock Foundation in the UK, John Prendergast from one of the largest Community Trusts in New Zealand and an active social lender using his trusts endowment (what we’d call a PRI maker) and Robyn Scott, the head of Philanthropy New Zealand and one of my key mentors). Note June is early winter in New Zealand and the mountain snows were just starting to fall.

• Fiona and I took full advantage of this opportunity and after our Queenstown talk, headed 2 ½ hours to Te Anau, near the Fiordlands, where we’d booked an overnight cruise on the Doubtful Sound. It was glorious. And the winter was a great time to go as there were no crowds. There were only 6 people on the boat, plus the operators, whom I highly recommend. Mandy and Richard Abernathy run a small business doing cruises in the Fiordland and offer a nice contrast to the larger operators. Their business is called Fiordland Expeditions (http://www.fiordlandexpeditions.com/). After cruising out to sea through one of the largest fiords, we were welcomed back into the fiord by a raucous pod of bottlenose dolphins that apparently love the vibration of the boat on their bellies and so they swim right alongside us affording close up views of their magnificence.

Around supper time, Richard, the owner/skipper, anchored the boat by the side of the fiord, donned a very thick wetsuit and got dinner – all you could eat crayfish or NZ Lobster. Just as tasty as the Maine variety, except without the claws. Richard literally pulled the 6 beauties pictured off the underwater wall in about 15 minutes underwater.

While the crayfish cooked, we fished and I caught a huge dogfish shark – not bad for a first attempt. The next morning, we fished some more and kayaked a bit, before more cruising up several of the fiord’s arms and then back to the dock.

• After Doubtful Sound we flew to Christchurch the day before our next Funders Forum. I squeezed in a most interesting meeting with some of the staff of Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu, one of the nations’ strongest Māori iwi, or tribes, and a visit to the Canterbury Museum, where I saw the following exhibit about one of my great great great uncles, Nathanial Brown Palmer who, in 1821 on a sealing expedition from New England, bumped into Antarctica and is one of its disputed discoverers.